Some relationships come with a sell by date, you know the types, you meet, you fall in love but deep down inside you know that it’ll never work. You know that what you want and what they want just doesn’t match up. You want to work on your career, he wants you to settle down and have a big family. He wants to party till dawn, you just want to snuggle on the couch. You’re so incompatible that sometimes you find yourself making lists in your head about what you might possibly have in common. Tell me you know what I mean?

You just know that it will never work

That niggling feeling keeps tickling down your spine but you leap in any way, hoping that by some miracle, this will actually work out and you will be so wrong about everything that your gut feeling is telling you. You will get your fairy tale ending and the happily ever after will come so much sooner than you could have even imagined.

But then it doesn’t

Oh no, just as your omniscient little gut had predicted, your relationship begins to show the cracks. Eventually you notice that the cracks have grown so large you’re not even sure they can be called cracks anymore. Giant gaping holes surely aren’t called cracks are they?

By now you’ve been together over ten years and you’ve worked so damn hard that walking away seems like the most ridiculous thing you could do. You’ve invested so much of yourself. You’ve sacrificed so much more. You’re not even sure who you are anymore and the things you used to like, seem like memories lost in a different time. You think back to the person who once was. You think about how intertwined your lives are. How much you love their family. You can’t lose them.

So you keep working at it

Sooner or later though, your stomach starts to churn.

Every time you have a conversation, you feel yourself biting down harder and harder on your tongue to stop yourself saying what you really mean. People start to avoid being around you, they stop coming out to dinner with you and they definitely don’t invite you around anymore.

Yup, you’ve become THAT couple

The one everyone knows is only staying together for “the sake of the kids” or because you “love each other but just aren’t in love with each other.”

You don’t even know when that started happening but you tell yourself it’s okay because you want it to be. Really, you do.

Breaking up is damn hard to do

Going through your bookshelf and dividing up yours from mine is an awful feeling and once you’ve merged your books that is a sign that you will be together until the day you die. Isn’t it? Well at least it should be. And this isn’t even the hardest part. If there are children, it’s so much more complicated now. You’re both concerned with damaging little lives, you don’t know what you’d do without each other but you know that you can’t stay. You want to leave but you want to stay, your emotions are a mess.

Sometimes, it’s just time

Sadly, when it comes to relationships, we’ve all been there. We’ve all stuck around WAY longer than we should have.

We’ve told ourselves all the lies we’ve needed to make us stay but when it’s over, it’s over.

You know it, your partner knows it and all of your friends and family have known it for so long that they’ve stopped bothering to say anything.

It’s time to let go

It’s time to cut that cord, to unlock those chains holding you there.

It’s finally time to pack your damn books up and hit the road Jack.

There’s so much more life out there just waiting for you. 

Maybe it’s time to just accept what you’re capable of and the happiness that awaits you…

You’ve got this!